Swiss whistleblowers pay the price

Whistleblowers are “in.” We regularly hear spectacular U.S. stories of employees blowing the whistle on organizations and receiving large federal payouts from prosecution of multimillion-dollar fraud cases. But what’s the whistleblower situation in Europe and, more specifically, my home base, Switzerland?

Yasmine Motarjemi told me her whistleblowing tale during a recent interview and through letters. In 2010, the then Nestlé manager decided to make her fight public after her dismissal. Ten years earlier, Nestlé had hired Motarjemi, who holds a doctorate in food engineering, to improve food safety.

From the beginning of her tenure, Motarjemi noted gaps in internal controls and in the expertise of the staff. Food safety is based on specifications, such as levels of pollution thresholds, which organizations must regularly check. However, Nestlé hadn’t checked on some specifications for 20 years. This neglect could’ve led to serious problems in some products, such as baby food.

When Motarjemi refused to sign untested specifications, Nestlé assigned this responsibility to someone else. She also said that Nestlé had bought cheap, contaminated raw material from China. The then France director for food safety wasn’t pleased. When he then became Motarjemi‘s manager, her problems began.

As Motarjemi puts it, bullying is a pernicious process. She soon realized that her boss was publicly humiliating and discrediting her. Her legal action against Nestlé is still ongoing. She’s only requested one symbolical Swiss Franc in compensation along with reimbursement of litigation costs and lost income. Motarjemi is one of the few who’ve dared to go public. Rightly so! The legislation in Switzerland is anything but whistleblower-friendly.

The Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) defines whistleblower protection as “legal protection from discriminatory or disciplinary action against employees who disclose to the competent authorities in good faith and on reasonable grounds wrongdoing of whatever kind in the context of their workplace.” (See OECD's Committing to Effective Whistleblower Protection.)

In Switzerland, labor laws don’t explicitly regulate such disclosures. The Swiss government doesn’t have financial incentives for whistleblowers like the U.S. Efforts to change the law have been going on since 2003; the Parliament and the Confederation Council keep sending bills back and forth to each other for review.

Although companies often have internal policies that promote open cultures without retaliation, consequences aren’t transparent. In practice, this means that employees can hardly defend themselves against abusive dismissal.

Whistleblower stories

Two other whistleblowers I know of, we’ll call them Celeste and John, have worked in the same Swiss major corporation (without ever knowing each other). They have two different cases.

Celeste and her angry boss

Celeste once worked for an abusive manager (we’ll call him Liam) who constantly terrorized, threatened and insulted his staff. Liam managed a global team and had a perfect career on paper. (He graduated from Oxford University, had been a top bank manager, etc.) Regardless, the team knew he had little knowledge of the department’s activities. The employees learned to deal with this moody man who periodically lost it; he humiliated, yelled at and threatened to fire them.

Liam asked Celeste to use false figures for a presentation to global executives, but she refused. Liam erupted, and Celeste felt physically threatened. The CFO later told her that Liam had requested her dismissal. Celeste called human resources (HR) employees, but they didn’t help.

One day in the cafeteria, as she was standing in line next to the CEO, she had the courage to say, “we need to talk.” The CEO took the time to listen to the whole thing and promised to act. The company began an internal investigation, interviewed 37 employees, decided Liam was a threatening person whose behavior often showed bipolar traits and dismissed him.

The company moved Celeste to a new team whose boss had recently left. The new boss told Celeste in their first meeting he’d heard a lot about her and wouldn’t tolerate “such behavior.” He then began to remove her responsibilities, excluded her from meetings and demoted her.

Celeste’s boss placed her on a “development plan” because of her “weak performance.” The HR manager required her to attend weekly meetings with human resources’ employees because she was a “difficult element.” The company cut her budget, so she could no longer do her job. It finally gave her four months’ notice (instead of the usual three) and required her to sign a form that said she wouldn’t take legal action against the company.

The company intimidated him, searched for misconduct and demoted him. John, thoroughly burned out from the harassment, petitioned for sick leave. The company eventually released him.

“The thorough review of the documents, however, gives the impression that the termination relates directly to the whistleblowing case of June 2011,” her lawyer said. “The systematic exclusion and resulting demotion point out to bullying. For this reason, it may be an abusive termination.

“If you would like to claim an abusive dismissal, you would have to raise a written objection against the dismissal during your notice period. The court would review the circumstances at your request. Labor disputes up to CHF 30,000 are free. If the court came to the conclusion that the dismissal was abusive, you could be awarded a compensation up to six months’ wages; this maximum is however hardly pronounced,” the lawyer concluded.

Burned-out John

John led the global pricing department at the same company. He was responsible for compliance with market-based competition or anti-trust law, among other things. During a country audit, he discovered that the company hadn’t followed competition rules. He collected data and concluded that local teams acted unlawfully. He asked an external lawyer for their opinion, and they came to a similar conclusion.

The identified risks for this anti-trust infraction were:

• Fines of $200 million.
• Prison sentences for some executives.
• Loss of reputation.
• Share-price loss.

When he reported this possible crime internally, he was amazed by the reaction. The company offered him a new job in a different department, which he refused. (It would have been too expensive for the company to fire him outright at this point.) Instead, he offered to investigate and determine a solution. Of course, that wasn’t his fate. The company intimidated him, searched for misconduct and demoted him. John, thoroughly burned out from the harassment, petitioned for sick leave. The company eventually released him.

Celeste and John both figured out what it’s like to “mess with the wrong people” in the most unpleasant ways.

Retaliation always the same

Whistleblowers can report food security issues, abusive managers, illegal activities or non-compliance with competition rules to their companies, but the retaliation process is almost always identical: They endure bullying, transfer to other departments, demotion and finally dismissal.

Organizations give such vague reasons for termination as “performance,” “unsatisfactory work” or even “improper conduct” on unemployment agency forms. All whistleblowers tell similar tales of this difficult road: the shame, humiliation, sadness, depression and even suicidal thoughts. They’re terribly disappointed in their friends, good colleagues and acquaintances who’ve let them down or even slandered them in court.

Some become ill from mental stress. One whistleblower I knew of asked her son on her hospital bed to continue the fight if she didn’t survive her operation. (Fortunately, she did survive.) Even though they might have well-paying jobs, they often go bankrupt because their employers block their pension money, sickness allowances, overtime and leave days. And the loss of social status associated with financial loss is devastating. Whistleblowers call it “suffered social violence.”

And yet, many would do it again but maybe in a different way, “cleverer, more structured and more methodical,” as John says. Doing nothing and looking away are simply against their nature. Whistleblowers have an above-average morality, honesty, righteousness and work ethic. Each often say, above all, they have to “be able to look at myself in the mirror.”

If they realize their organizations are ignoring them or offering them silence money, then they become even more frustrated. Going public is less to do with revenge than their need to bring truth to light. Reporting wrongdoing is their mission. In retrospect, John says he sees his experience in a more down-to-earth way: “It became my problem, and I was not the cause. I became Don Quixote.”

They’ve lost their confidence in business. Above all, they regret that Swiss law isn’t on their side and even punishes the good guys. And most culprits keep their jobs while the whistleblowers lose theirs.

Rehabilitation takes time

Whistleblowers often have had excellent careers, and when they’re suddenly exposed to the diffuse behavior of unscrupulous individuals and arbitrary, abusive dismissal they encounter mental issues. They might have post-traumatic stress disorder, so they must seek out psychological support. They must learn to talk about their experiences and betrayals early in the processes, but they’re often isolated and afraid to be burdens on others.

Rehabilitation takes a long time. After years, whistleblowers can still feel contempt rather than mere resentment towards the guilty. However, they still can’t understand why their colleagues deliberately lied or looked away. Over time, they partially come to terms with living in a cowardly society, which helps support the misery of whistleblowers.

What do these whistleblowers recommend to people who are confronted with dubious organizational situations? One advises to always ask two questions, “Do you have a family? Do you want to continue to work in the same sector? If so, don’t do it.” He knows the misery well: He and his family have been receiving threats. In Switzerland.

Sometimes, a happy ending

On Oct. 12, 2017, Andrea Franzoso presented his book “Il disobbediente” (“The disobedient”) in the Roman Palazzo Madama, seat of the Italian Senate. The book tells his story as a whistleblower at the Italian semi-state company Nord Ferrovie in 2015. The then managing director had misused public funds amounting to about 600,000 EUR. Franzoso was initially reluctant to go public, but he blew the whistle when he realized the company wouldn’t do anything internally.

In his first media interview, the English translation for the headline on the 2016 La Repubblica newspaper article was “I was out of work for denouncing the boss, I lost but I would do it again.”

But Franzoso is now a lobbyist for Transparency International. And the former managing director has been sentenced to two years and eight months, according to an Oct. 24, 2017, article in the Italian newspaper, “Corriere della Sera.”

The Italian Senate now has passed a new law to protect whistleblowers. “My story is a fable with a happy ending,” Franzoso says. His tale is an encouragement to all would-be whistleblowers to be courageously ethical.

Audrey Milesi, CFE, AML, ACCA, is founder of Flying CFO. She was a speaker at the 2018 ACFE Fraud Conference Europe and the 2018 ACFE Fraud Conference Middle East. Contact her at info@flying-cfo.com.